‘Orange Is the New Black’ Season 5 Takes Place Over Less Than a Week

Orange Is the New Black Season 4 left us on a more immediate cliffhanger than we’re used to, and it seems Season 5 won’t be losing that level of intensity. Star Danielle Brooks claims the whole of Season 5 will unfurl over just a few days; presumably picking up with the in-progress riot of Season 4.

You’re warned of full Orange Is the New Black spoilers from here on out, but Brooks told E! News at the SAG Awards that the entirety of Season 5 would take place within just three days. Netflix has yet to set a formal premiere date for the show’s fifth season, though another summer bow seems likely:

Season five is done over the course of three days. You will watch 13 episodes, and find out what happens in the course of three days. So, it will be very detailed, very intense, and you better get ready. Get your popcorn, your tissues, everything. I don’t know when it’s coming out because they never tell us, but sometime in the summer.

Pure speculation on our part, but it’s possible that Season 5's truncated timeline owes to the Litchfield uprising that marked the end of Season 4; most immediately with Daya (Dascha Polanco) pointing a gun at villainous C.O. Humphrey. It might make sense if the standoff took a few days to resolve (or even went full Rashomon), to say nothing of Orange Is the New Black still theoretically fitting 5+ seasons within Piper’s fifteen-month sentence.